Evolution Of Snow Goose Hunting

Snow Goose Hunting And How Did We Get Here?

Since snow geese back in the day were not worth chasing, the gear was also pretty lackluster, to say the least. All of the best gear revolved around ducks, mainly mallards, and Canadian Geese. Since Canadian Geese can be found pretty much anywhere in the world, there is a very good reason they were marketed towards. Nearly all waterfowl hunting manufacturers focused their interest and product designation into building the best gear for ducks and geese, leaving the snow goose hunting to the birds. In the early days, those that did hunt them would use random household items that were white, and most of the stories from those who did hunt them used gear like white trash bags, white jugs, old tires, white milk jugs, and anything and everything they could get their hands on easily that was white. Can you imagine hunting ducks or geese with a bunch of old milk jugs or tires? You think about trying to shoot Canada geese with those or mallards for that matter, but they worked, mostly due to the fact that they were not pressured.

When I started hunting snow geese in Mound City way back when the conservation season started over 24 years ago, I had the pleasure of talking with some of the old-timers who would hunt snow geese as a last resort, and the stories of how they used to hunt them were always jaw-dropping and eye-opening at the same time. One of the most memorable stories to me involved paper plates and bike horns. You heard right, paper plates and bike horns, not a couple of thousand decoys, e-callers, and trailers full of gear. A stack of paper plates and the loud annoying bike horns from a kid's bicycle! This particular hunt, these gentlemen had exhausted their ducks, and snow geese had been on the radar, and they didn't have a clue on what to do, so they decided to go to the grocery store, grab their plate decoys and their kids' bike horns from their bikes, and headed out to their duck blind with hope and a prayer. As the old fish tales go, it was one of those days that is painted probably more ecstatically as it really was, but they had my attention. As the sun broke the ground and the birds started to pour in, the geese seemed mostly uninterested as they crested over the top of the duck blind, most on a mission to another place. And then they started in with the bike horns, squeaking them profusely and as rapidly as human hands could squeeze out the air of those rubber bike horn bladders, all the while another guy in the group started throwing paper plates up in the sky to mimic geese landing and jumping around. I have to give it to them; it is resourceful for sure and makes sense to me, but as it went, the more they did this, the more the snow geese started decoying, and they started shooting. As it was explained, it was like shooting fish in a barrel, as the old-timers liked to say. Their barrels got hot, and they were running through shells as fast as they could load them. Regardless of the details and how it really was in reality, they made hay, and it worked out, which is pretty awesome fast forward many decades, and we are living in a totally different snow goose hunting climate these days.

Snow Goose Hunting Progression

From the days of the paper plates and the white garbage bags, snow goose hunting moved into the era of rag snow goose decoys, windsock snow goose decoys, layout blinds, and the introduction of the conservation order snow goose season, the e-caller. Easy to store, easy to move, and easy to buy snow goose rags, snow goose windsocks, layout blinds, and e-callers really brought snow goose hunting to a whole new level. Even with the improved decoy options, at best they were only a marginal improvement compared to tying white plastic bags to a stick because, well, in the case of Texas rags, it was exactly like tying white plastic bags to a stick.

I can remember the early days of getting the rags in and having to tie up the rag decoys to the wooden dowels and spending tireless late nights tying together hundreds of thousands of decoys only to watch them in seconds get demolished in high winds like they were never even on the stick. Those days we would set up our decoy spreads, and overnight we would come back to half of what we had set out still standing and still usable. We would show up early in anticipation of how many we were going to have to pull out of the ground and clean up before sunrise so we had a decent-looking decoy spread to hunt. When our full sets were out though and the wind was good, those decoys danced around as if it were a large flock of snow geese on the ground feeding, and it looked as realistic as we could get in those days.

Then we evolved even more with windsocks bringing us one step closer to perfection, or so we thought. But, as it was like the rags, they had their advantages but also their disadvantages. They took up a little bit more space than the rags, and they also had heads, which was nice and pretty real-looking in the right winds, but over time those heads would fall off, break, and were a decent pain to manage. However, they did stand up better in stiff winds than the rags did, and we found that less and less we had to clean up our decoy spreads in the early mornings. Which to a snow goose guide meant a little more sleep and a little less work. For those that have had the experience of guiding snow goose hunts in those early days, understands sleep was minimal and work was always. 4-5 hours of sleep a night was expected and even in some cases a welcomed improvement.

E-callers were also a welcomed advantage bringing us the ability to sound like geese on the ground making it even better to bring in those large flocks of snow geese into gunning range. Though they were also sometimes a giant pain to deal with. Being that they were large tape decks and a couple speakers, they were easy to manage but not great to deal with. They were constantly broken and didn't hold up well to weather, wear, tear, and usage. The most common issues we faced were tapes stopped working or got worn out, the jacks that plugged into the tape decks were constantly coming detached and or were hanging on by a literal thread and you had to hold the jack in the deck or get it to sit just right to keep the sound coming out of them, tapes only have a playing time of 120 minutes making them super unreliable for timing we would get flocks working in and you guessed it at that 120-minute mark it would be dead silence all of a sudden while that large flock was decoying in causing them to flare and pull out, and lastly the heads would just all together stop working probably due to moisture, weather, and mud. They sounded good when working but they were work to keep working. This was the start of the snow goose commercialization and I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. They were a heck of a lot of fun though a great pain in the rear mostly it was a lot of work but a lot of fun.

Snow Goose Hunting Has Come A Long Way

Over time snow goose hunting has become one of those adventures that most waterfowl hunters actually dream about now which is a far and away difference from way back when. Along with the desire for those to get in on the spin has brought along the evolution of the waterfowl hunting industry's focus on providing better, more efficient, and more lifelike hunting gear for hunting snow geese. Now we have the options of dragging around massive trailers with massive decoy spreads of true-to-life looking decoys, speaker systems run from car batteries belting out the sweet sounds of actual snow geese feeding, and all sorts of whirly bird machines and other gadgets to mimic the most realistic display a decoy set can produce. We are living in a time where our gear is nearly as good as the real thing. But, there is a but, the more we evolve the more the snow geese evolve as well. Even with the brain the size of a small grape or smaller they still manage to beat us at our own game majority of the time making us feel well, frustrated to say the least. Even with all this realistic lifelike gear, mother nature and snow geese can put us in our place.

I will say this; it was a time of innovation and invention that moved us into the gear we have now and with all those struggles brought on more and more, better and better, snow goose hunting gear compared to what we had and or our early relatives had making it much more manageable to hunt and or chase snow geese as a whole. Today though I think we have almost plateaued on what we are producing for snow goose hunting gear and waterfowl hunting gear in general. You can tell because there is not a lot of innovation going on these days with new gear only regurgitation or carbon copies of the same gear being produced by all the manufacturers. If someone puts out a new blind, they all put out another nearly exact copy of the same blind, and the same goes for nearly everything. There just isn't any new products coming out that are not just carbon copies of the other guys' products.

Snow Goose Hunting And Where To Go From Here?

To those up and comers and guys that are getting into the sport now or even the last 5-10 years, be thankful for what you have and enjoy the time you get chasing these crazy snow geese around the country. And remember you have it 100 times better with the snow goose hunting gear that is available now than we did and even the generations before us did. Yeah, it is a lot of work setting up those trailers full of decoys but at least the gear will stand up now and keep on working day in and day out, and you don't show up in the morning to your night's work being wiped out, your e-callers not working at all, and worrying whether or not you're going to have wind at all because if you don't your decoys will look like rags tied to a stick and the snow geese won't even give you a look whatsoever, or as I liked to call them penguin decoy spreads and nap days. So, what's next and where do we go now?

With snow geese getting smarter and smarter, our gear reaching its possible potential, and a pretty stagnant waterfowl hunting industry as a whole. Where do we go from here? Is there going to be another evolution in waterfowl hunting gear and or snow goose hunting gear? Currently, there aren't any signs of growth in that department. Is there going to be a change in how we hunt them? What is the next big thing? and or what are we going to see in the next 5 - 10 years for snow goose hunting? I am eager to find out, and regardless of evolution and or changes in migration patterns and all the things snow goose hunting brings to the table, I will surely be on the chase. For those interested in giving snow goose hunting a try and want to book a snow goose hunt, contact us today to get under em and find out what snow goose hunting can be all about!